


a wry filigree

by thefudge



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Stepmom/Son, grumpy gruff bear likes little flirty fox, incestuous vibes, since Tom Hardy emotes in gruffs I am reading between the lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 22:51:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9628742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: A few inconsequential things James likes about his step-mother. Post 1x05.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So you know how there's the Anti-Hero, who's not really villain, but not pure hero? Replace Hero with Fluff, and you get this fic. It's tender, but also kind of grimy. I love my children. Enjoy!

 

...Let us stay  
Rather on earth, Beloved,--where the unfit  
Contrarious moods of men recoil away  
And isolate pure spirits, and permit  
A place to stand and love in for a day,  
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.  

                                          (Elizabeth Barrett Browning - _When our two souls..._ )

 

 

There are a few things he likes about his inopportune step-mother, although “like” is such an inadequate word. Let us say, he allows these things to exist.

He likes the singular pronounced laugh line on her right cheek. Whether she’s wretched or gleeful, whether she’s smiling or crying and even when her face is at rest, there is that strike against her skin, a wry filigree of experience. She knows things. It’s not a wrinkle of old age. He can picture her, looking back in time - he can picture the small, stubborn child, carrying the mark around her mouth like a witch’s stigma. That’s where her pride comes from.

He likes that she drapes herself as an opportunist but is, at heart, a weak, affectionate creature. He knows there was not enough money to make a Mrs. Delaney happy, particularly an actress. Judging from the men that regularly pay her attention, she could have done far better. No, she married his father out of some vaudevillian sentiment. She must have thought it was romantic or eccentric or both. She’d read his feverish letters and thought him a poet. No one'd ever read old Delaney’s doddering letters, not even his lawyers, but  _she_  did. She must have thought she was doing an old man a kindness. She must have though “I am different from the rest”.

He likes that there is low cunning in her breast, enough to conceal from the world that she is pitifully kind.

He likes that she groans and gnashes her teeth on the stage when the belligerent crowd does not appreciate her poetry. He likes how much she loves Shakespeare and how she dreams herself elsewhere when she utters words from bygone times. He likes how doggedly serious she is when she performs. She is never playful on the stage, never twirls her skirts or jumps on her heels. Her face is a classical mask of horror, and she demands only grace from her audience.

He likes how she sits in his red chair, in his dingy parlor, and practices her lines quietly to herself, one hand on her chest, fingers toying absently with the frills of her dress.

He likes how she has made a mongrel of her hair, has dyed it and colored it and fashioned it until its real nature is no longer visible to the eye. He knows she keeps tinctures in her little bag and under the bed, powders shipped from all over the world. She must have spent a fortune on them. He likes how foolish she is.

He likes her garish make-up, the way she lets it slobber down her cheeks. He likes how she puts it on, as a slap in the face to whomever should care to look. 

He likes her clean face in the morning when she’s made the effort to bathe. He likes that she smells of dry paper from her books and plays and pamphlets. Paper and charcoal and linseed oil, that’s her scent.

He likes that her heart is varied. She does not trust flowers, she is not moved by gifts, but she likes words a great deal. She is susceptible to small gestures; she is readily flattered by unpremeditated actions. In order to please her, one must do nothing, but one must  _be_  something.

He likes how easy it would be to crack her skull against the wooden boards. Not because he has a violent urge towards her, but because some people’s heads are thick and full of lies and shit and even when you break their fragile bones, they leave a smear, a shame. He knows that she would crack clean and well.

He likes that she acts like a countess, bold and strong and entitled, when she has nothing to recommend her. She orders Brace around without mortification, she demands changes and improvements in the house, she wants poached eggs for breakfast. She is shivering in a tattered petticoat in front of the Crown’s men, but she still chooses to uncoil her spine, and with a tilt of her head, whisper, “I’m waiting for a better offer.”

He likes that she is a leech, latching onto the flesh that gives her life. She likes that she is a faithful little leech, and once she has sunk her teeth in, she won’t think of bleeding someone else dry.

He likes that she is not beautiful. She is pretty, like a bauble or a gimcrack, displayed for its second-class properties, a little dirty and dusty and varnished, but startling and fresh in its mechanisms. 

He likes that she is still a child, still cries when paintings are burned, still cries when men happen to die.

He likes that her dress smells of reeds from the river which she crossed on her way to him.

He likes that she did the crossing without much forethought. She was being honest, and they did not see. She  _was_ bored, but one of her great attributes is that she can be be bored  _and_  afraid at the same time.

He likes how she went and sat by the fire and did not yell “stop! Please, spare him!” at any time, to any of the parties.

He likes that she flinched, but did not close her eyes when the gun was shot.

He likes that if he ever fucked her, she would also keep her eyes open. 

He likes that she says “hell” a lot, and even once when she inquired about his sister. “Who the hell is that?” she asked at the ball. He would have given anything to be able to speak like that about Zilpha.

He likes that she finds humor in his silence and wit in his rejection.

He likes that she will live beyond him, someday.

He likes that, years from now, someone will discover her ribbon-like name on a play sheet and next to  _Lorna Bow_  there will be  _Indian Princess_.

He likes that he can feel nothing for her and still find many things in that nothingness which amuse him, which comfort him.

He likes that he can entertain the thought of him as an old man, a new decrepit Delaney, who at 70 marries the widowed Mrs. Delaney at Gretna Green, in sham and spectacle and laughter.

He likes that when he says her name at night, in his room, as he sits by the fire with ash in his eyes, she does not answer.

He likes that he cannot enter her dreams, that if he did, she would curl her lip, and that witch’s mark against her cheek would shine, and she’d say, trembling and happy, “I didn’t know you cared that much”.

He likes that she is not at all like the gunpowder which his son stirs from day to night. She will not explode, there will be no flames. 

He likes that, when he thinks of her nakedness, he thinks of a candle, a dog leaping up to meet him, a tree's branches sweeping the ground. He likes that there is no nakedness there. 

He likes that she does not have generous breasts upon which to dine. 

He likes that she would cradle his head in bed, but she would keep it still, she would not caress his forehead.

He likes that, on the letter she received from Mr. Cholmondeley, her name was spelled  _Lorna Bow Delaney._

He likes that she would whisper "could you stop biting me!", affronted, and swat her knuckles against his eyes and twist underneath him like a fox. 

He likes that, even mid-fucking, she would think of Shakespeare and Spenser, and other damned rhymers that enchant her. 

He likes that she never asks for the newspaper, she always collects it herself. 

He likes that if someone cast her into the ocean, the waves would spit her back on the shore. 

He likes that she will never know the depth of his preference.

He likes that she will never ask.

He likes that she will simply know and smile and say, “I shan’t hinder your advances.”


End file.
